Mrs Foster today made clear:“Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom. The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way.”

How on earth could a Conservative Prime Minister have allowed herself to be drawn into a position where that “economic and constitutional integrity” could be questioned in the slightest degree?

What part of the words “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” does the Prime Minister fail to comprehend?

Too many Tories have been relying on the complacent assumption that DUP MPs will continue to support the government at Westminster (despite every provocation and betrayal) because they cannot possibly risk a Jeremy Corbyn government.

It’s time for the DUP (and any remaining genuine Tory patriots) to call that bluff.

Representatives of two now defunct nationalist parties – the British Peoples Party and the England First Party – lay wreaths at the War Memorial in Darwen, Lancashire, on Remembrance Day 2006. Delegates included veteran nationalist Eddy Morrison (front row, far left) and then EFP councillors Mark Cotterill and Michael Johnson.

For the last three years Remembrance Day activities have had a special resonance, marking the centenary of the First World War and its many tragic episodes.

The last week has seen the centenary of two interconnected and far-reaching events which would never have occurred had this European Civil War never started – the Bolshevik Revolution and the Balfour Declaration which laid the foundations for seventy years of Soviet tyranny and (so far) almost seventy years of Zionist oppression in Palestine.

On Armistice Day – November 11th 1918 – the mother of Wilfred Owen, a 25-year-old second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, was informed that her son had been killed in action seven days earlier. Owen – now regarded as the leading poet of the war – was killed at the head of a raiding party crossing the Sambre-Oise Canal in northern France. This was one of the last British “victories” of the war.

As we reflect on the cost of “victory” in the two disastrous European civil wars of the 20th century we remember Wilfred Owen’s posthumously published lines:

If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum estPro patria mori.

The late Ralph Hebden, friend and comrade of the H&D team, on active service in Afghanistan with 45 Commando, Royal Marines.

Some of these meetings involved plans to pay Britain’s overseas aid via the Israeli army.

Ms Patel breached diplomatic protocol by visiting Israeli occupied territory on the Golan Heights as a guest of the government. Britain and most other countries do not officially recognised Israeli control of the Golan, and Ms Patel compounded her offence by suggesting on her return to Britain that our government should provide funds for the Israeli field hospital in the occupied territory.

Former British ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer expressed the astonishment of the diplomatic community:
“What did she think she was doing? Incomprehensibly daft.”

It seems that Ms Patel believed both that she herself was untouchable, as the daughter of Ugandan Asian immigrants and a valuable symbol for her pro-Brexit, neo-Thatcherite wing of the Tory party, and that she was effectively representing the Prime Minister’s pro-Israel instincts, against the more evenhanded approach of the Foreign Office.

Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle has an exclusive story this morning stating that Ms Patel’s ultimate offence – not revealing two of her secret meetings even in her latest press statement after the scandal broke – was actually sanctioned by the Prime Minister’s office. Number 10 (according to Mr Pollard’s sources) asked Ms Patel to keep these meetings secret so as not to embarrass the Foreign Office.

Today’s Tory establishment couldn’t have chosen a better way to mark this week’s centenary of the Balfour Declaration. They have established that 100 years on their party’s relationship with Zionism remains steeped in dishonour.

Jez Turner – organiser of the London Forum – has been charged with “inciting racial hatred” in connection with his speech at the “Anti-Shomrim” rally in Whitehall on 4th July 2015.

The Zionist lobby group “Campaign Against Anti-Semitism” had brought a legal action to force the Crown Prosecution Service to bring charges against Mr Turner, even though the CPS had originally decided he committed no offence.

An initial hearing will be held at 1.30 pm on Monday 30th October at Westminster Magistrates Court, Marylebone.

Meanwhile another prosecution instigated by the CAA sees anti-Zionist folk singer Alison Chabloz facing charges under the Communications Act, relating to songs uploaded to YouTube. A full day’s hearing of this case will take place at the same Marylebone court on October 25th at 10 am.

Now the ban has been extended to cover two alleged aliases for NA: Scottish Dawn and NS131. Under the Terrorism Act this latest action is unnecessary, as the law already forbids any attempt to restart a banned organisation under a new alias, but the new banning orders are probably a ‘belt and braces’ policy – a similar approach was taken in issuing extra bans for numerous aliases of the Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun.

The question remains whether this is the start of a wider crack down on the so-called ‘far right’, or whether it is a cosmetic exercise by the Home Office. Government experts must be well aware that a widespread crackdown on Islamism, including many banning orders and possible internment without trial, is likely – so it might seem politic to lock up a few White nationalists as well.

Despite all the hype, UKIP’s small-c conservative membership eventually voted for the most obviously “respectable” leadership candidate.

Former intelligence officer Henry Bolton was today elected UKIP leader with 3,874 votes (29.9%), ahead of the anti-Islam campaigner Anne Marie Waters on 2,755 (21.3%). The party’s peculiar first-past-the-post, single ballot system – and the fact that there were seven candidates on the ballot paper, six of whom had a serious chance – meant it was always likely that the winner would have less than one third of the membership’s support.

Turnout was only 46.6%, reflecting the fact that many of those nominally listed as party members (and entitled to vote) have already quit UKIP and had no interest in its leadership contest.

Bolton had warned that a victory for Waters and her EDL backers would risk UKIP becoming some form of “nazi party”. He will now claim a clear mandate, since the two most obvious anti-Islam candidates (Ms Waters and GLA member Peter Whittle) had only 32.2% between them, so even with a transferable vote Ms Waters would not have won.

Mixed-race GLA member David Kurten finished third with 2,201 votes (17.0%); Welsh businessman and libertarian John Rees-Evans fourth on 2,021 (15.6%); original bookies’ favourite Peter Whittle fifth on 1,413 (10.9%), after much of his support drained to Ms Waters; Rotherham parliamentary candidate Jane Collins a surprisingly poor sixth on 566 (4.4%) despite having been backed by two former rival candidates who withdrew in her favour; and space-travel enthusiast Aidan Powlesland seventh on 85 (0.65%).

All eyes now are on Nigel Farage and his financial backer Arron Banks, who had plans to launch a new breakaway movement within days if Waters or Whittle were elected. Their decision may now depend on whether Henry Bolton is able to secure constitutional changes reducing the role of the party’s executive and enhancing the leadership’s power.

The most likely short-term breakaway is now from the other side of the party: Anne Marie Waters and her Islam-obsessed faction.

One of Ms Waters’s leading allies, Paul Weston of Liberty GB, reacted badly to the result, tweeting: “UKIP needed a revolutionary leader, instead it got Mr Establishment Henry Bolton OBE who will do nothing whatsoever about Islam.”

Another close Waters associate, EDL founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (alias Tommy Robinson), similarly commented: “UKIP are now irrelevant when it comes to the biggest threat our country faces. We need a political voice to oppose Islam like Wilders & Le Pen.”

By contrast third-placed David Kurten and fellow candidate Jane Collins were quick to tweet their loyalty to the new leader.

H&D will have a fuller report on the UKIP contest later this weekend, and a detailed analysis in issue 81 of what these developments mean for the British nationalist movement.

This is partly the old story of ego overtaking party commitment. Mrs Petry rapidly became the best known public face of AfD after ousting the party’s founder Bernd Lucke in July 2015, and she might have started to believe she was bigger than the party.

Commentators also need to be more careful in referring to ‘moderate’ and ‘hardline’ factions in AfD. Mrs Petry herself was considered an ‘extremist’ when her faction took over the party two years ago. Most of AfD’s founders had been interested mainly in reforming the EU, and were a very moderate version of UKIP. Mrs Petry and her allies were unafraid of using hardline anti-immigration rhetoric.

This paid off as German voters revolted against conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open door policy on ‘asylum seekers’. At one stage AfD was polling close to 20% and began winning seats in regional parliaments (Landtag) across Germany.

AfD’s candidate for Chancellor, 72-year-old former CDU official Alexander Gauland (right) was unimpressed by Mrs Petry’s behaviour this morning

However Mrs Petry – while happy to use extreme language about immigration and especially about Islam – was very nervous about offending Germany’s small but noisy Jewish population, and wanted to avoid challenging taboo subjects connected to her country’s 20th century history.

Notably she refused to back the leader of anti-Islam group Pegida when he proposed that circumcision of children should be banned until they reach 18 and can decide for themselves. AfD’s draft manifesto in 2016 supported this policy, but Mrs Petry and her allies blocked it, realising that the policy would be seen as anti-Jewish as well as anti-Muslim.

Thuringia Landtag member Bjorn Höcke (centre), one of AfD’s most prominent spokesmen, seen here with Alexander Gauland and Frauke Petry, who later tried to have Höcke expelled from the party

By this time Mrs Petry was engaged in an internal battle within the party to enforce a policy of genuflecting to the national religion of ‘Holocaustianity’. She tried to get one party official, Bjorn Höcke, expelled from AfD – not for ‘Holocaust denial’, but for a speech in which he called the Berlin Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame”, and an interview in which he told the Wall Street Journal: “The big problem is that one presents Hitler as absolutely evil. But of course we know that there is no black and no white in history.”

AfD’s leading candidates at the Bundestag election – Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel – celebrating their record high vote last night

At this morning’s press conference Mrs Petry did not expand on her reasons for quitting the party. She seems to have the backing of a small faction in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where four fellow MPs elected yesterday as AfD candidates say they will also now sit as independents.

However the vast majority of the party is likely to view this morning’s outburst as petty and divisive, motivated by personal spite and vanity. Mrs Petry has almost certainly consigned herself to political oblivion. In particular it is difficult for her to sustain the argument that her line is the only “pragmatic” one, after AfD has just secured the best election result it could reasonably have hoped for.

AfD achieved 5.9 million votes (12.6%) and will have 94 seats in the new Bundestag. This is up from 2 million votes (4.7%) at the last general election in 2013, when the party fell just below the 5% threshold so had no seats. AfD’s results were especially outstanding in parts of the former East Germany – becoming the largest party in the region of Saxony (which includes the cities of Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz). AfD polled almost 670,000 votes (27.0%) in Saxony, ahead of Merkel’s CDU on 26.9%.

The best NPD constituency result was 2.0% in a Mecklenburg-Vorpommern district close to the Polish border in the far north-east; the party also managed 1.9% in several constituencies in Thuringia and Saxony. NPD polled 1.1% (28,434 votes) in Saxony as a whole, and 1.2% in Thuringia.

German general elections are a combination of Westminster-style constituencies (where an MP is elected first-past-the-post) and a proportional list-based system. Voters choose both an MP for their locality, and express a preference for a party. After each directly elected MP has been chosen, the rest of the Bundestag is drawn from various party lists so that its final composition matches the proportion of votes for each party (with a threshold of 5% of the national vote, below which a party gets no MPs at all).

Frauke Petry, co-leader of Alternative for Germany, has won her constituency in Saxony and will be one of a projected 88 AfD MPs.

AfD’s co-leader Frauke Petry has won her constituency in Saxony, top of the poll with 37.4% and gaining the district from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU. Two of Mrs Petry’s AfD colleagues in neighbouring Saxony districts were also directly elected – and at 2 a.m. German time came the sensational news that AfD is now the largest party in Saxony as a whole with almost 670,000 votes (27.0%) in this region of former East Germany! At a press conference the morning after this stunning result, Frauke Petry unfortunately distracted from the party’s success by announcing that she would not sit with AfD in the Bundestag. She then walked out of the press conference leaving party colleagues surprised and embarrassed. The party will hope not to be blighted by further displays of political immaturity.

AfD’s 12.6% vote was a significant improvement on polls at the start of the campaign that had put the party below 10%. This will make AfD the third largest party in the Bundestag: they are now projected to have 88 MPs but the precise total will depend detailed calculations not yet complete, due to the electoral system. Conservative Chancellor Merkel and her ex-coalition partners, the social-democratic SPD, have each polled lower than expected. Merkel will now struggle to form a viable coalition government, and will have to enter talks with both the liberal FDP and the Greens.

Exit poll shows that AfD is now the most popular party among male voters in the former East Germany

Merkel’s CDU/CSU polled 33.0%, down 9% from the previous election in 2013. The SPD was second on 20.5%, down 5.2% and a record postwar low, despite having enjoyed a brief boost in the polls earlier this year. AfD were third with 12.6%, up 7.9%. The liberal FDP (on various occasions postwar coalition partners with either CDU/CSU or SPD) will be back in the Bundestag with 10.7% (up 5.9%) after losing all their MPs in 2013. The Left Party (ex-communists and left-wing former SPD members) managed 9.2% (up 0.6%) and the Greens are similarly almost unchanged from last time with 8.9% (up 0.5%).

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pro-immigration policies have cost her party millions of votes

A few days ago in one of his final campaign speeches, AfD’s lead candidate Alexander Gauland said that Germans had the right to be proud of their soldiers’ record in the two 20th century world wars:

“If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars.”

Many journalists worldwide have been writing that AfD will be the first “far right” party to gain seats in the postwar German Bundestag. However the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent Philip Oltermann points out that at the very first Bundestag election in 1949 the Deutsche Rechtspartei (DRP – German Right Party), sometimes known as the German Conservative Party (DKP), won five seats.

This party suffered various splits, with some of its MPs joining the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) which was banned in 1952.

Some others then joined the Deutsche Reichspartei (German Reich Party, or German Empire Party, confusingly also abbreviated as DRP) which developed links with Sir Oswald Mosley and included Luftwaffe ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel among its members. This DRP never won Bundestag seats, though did win representation in the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag.

The NPD of course never won a Bundestag seat, though again winning various Landtag seats, and polling a peak of 3.6% at the 1969 Bundestag election.

The Deutsche Partei (German Party, DP) was a more respectable version of nationalism and had Bundestag seats from 1949 to 1961: indeed the DP was a coalition partner with the conservative CDU and CSU until 1960.

In 1960 the DP merged with the GB/BHE (a party representing Germans expelled from the eastern territories) to form the All-German Party (GDP), but this new merged party failed to win Bundestag seats at the 1961 election, and quickly faded, with several of its leading activists co-founding the new NPD in 1964.

Schönhuber’s Republikaner (Republican) party, which had its big success at the 1989 European election with 6 MEPs, never entered the Bundestag: its best result was 2.1% in 1990. At the founding of the Republikaner in 1983 as a split from the Bavarian conservative CSU, they had two Bundestag MPs (who had been elected as CSU) but by the time of the next Bundestag election in 1987 these two had quit the party and Schönhuber decided the party was too weak to contest those elections.

Thirty years on, German politics has been transformed. Today’s front pages convey the liberal establishment’s horror.

Gerry Adams was among the pallbearers at the 1988 funeral of IRA paedophile Brendan Davison

Lurid allegations of “paedophile rings” in British politics are still being investigated – at vast expense – by various police forces and a statutory enquiry, despite evidence that so far appears flimsy at best.

Yet one political organisation has a definite and longstanding link to paedophilia, which it covered up with threats of murder.

We refer to the terrorist scum of the Provisional IRA and their political front Sinn Fein.

Davison’s services for the secret state did not allow him to escape justice forever. He was executed by the Ulster Volunteer Force in his own home on 25th July 1988, killed instantly by a 7.62x39mm bullet to the forehead.

This is just another retelling of the Andy Carmichael story, first revealed by the Sunday Times in 1997. Carmichael was recruited by MI5 in 1991 and via a West Midlands Police Special Branch handler was paid to act as an informant and agent of disruption inside the National Front.

Contrary to the impression given by the Mercury, the NF was already a shadow of its former self by the time MI5 deployed Carmichael. Multiple splits had crippled the movement during the 1980s and during the early 1990s it was obvious that John Tyndall’s BNP, rather than the NF, was the significant force in British nationalism. Most of the senior figures in the NF’s ‘Flag’ faction (which by this time had unquestioned use of the party name) had already quit or were about to quit before Carmichael started doing MI5’s work.

Some of Ashcroft’s documents indicate that Carmichael helped to stir up a factional dispute within the NF, allying with party chairman Ian Anderson in changing the party’s name to National Democrats in 1995. Anderson’s rival John McAuley kept the NF name going, though Anderson had won a ballot of party members and took several leading activists with him as well as the party’s bank account.

In a bulletin included with the Ashcroft papers, John McAuley wrote:
“Carmichael was the main instigator of the ‘name change split’. Anderson could not have done it without Carmichael’s total support.”

Ian Anderson during an interview in 1991: the same year that Carmichael (who later duped him) was recruited by MI5

Curiously another important backer of Anderson (and personal friend of Carmichael) is not mentioned in the Mercury‘s story. Simon Darby went on to be right-hand man to Nick Griffin in the BNP for more than a decade, despite suspicions among anti-Griffin nationalists that Darby might also have been a state operative.

Meanwhile Wayne Ashcroft (like Lancashire-based former NF/ND activist Stephen Ebbs) moved on to the Conservative Party. He changed his name to George Ashcroft and was elected a Tory councillor for Telford & Wrekin and deputy chairman of the Telford Conservative Association. However he quit the Tories as part of a local dispute in 2008 and sat as an independent councillor until losing his seat in 2011.

Mr Ashcroft is now an MA student at Wolverhampton University and has had no connection with the nationalist movement for many years. He told the Mercury:
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions at the time and I have renounced racism and anything of that kind. …I admire the work the security services do, they are very good at diverting people from such groups and many people went on to normal lives and families and today are not involved in racism. If it had not have been for Andy Carmichael and others like him there are many people who could have gone down a very, very different path. In that respect I greatly admire him for putting himself on the line, he is a remarkable man.”

Former MI5 agent Carmichael is now a window salesman in Sutton Coldfield.